Already dead, p.22
Already Dead, page 22
The cop blubbered.
“M-my—my job?”
“Yes, your job! I told you to write down the name of every person who comes into this room!”
“I did!” the man shot back, fumbling with a piece of paper he pulled out of his pocket. It was worn and creased.
Chase grabbed it, opened it, and scanned the names. There was no Melissa on it, there was no Riley, there was no mention of any lawyer.
“Where’s the lawyer?”
“The—the what?”
Chase shook the piece of paper.
“The lawyer that visited her yesterday! Where’s her name on this list?” When the man started blubbering again, Chase thrust the paper against his chest. “Doesn’t matter. I want Jane—Bridget, I want Bridget moved.”
“Excuse me?”
At the end of her wits now, Chase took an aggressive step forward, ignoring the pain in her throat and chest.
“That girl in there, her name is Bridget. And I want her moved,” Chase said, raising her voice.
Down the hallway, she saw Dr. Heinlin step out of one of the patient rooms and glance in her direction.
Good, Chase thought, because I’m going to need his cooperation, as well.
“I was told...” The officer made a face and rubbed his triceps with his opposite hand. “I was told that she has to stay here.”
“But I’m telling you, as a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she needs to be moved.”
The cop’s eyes darted.
“Still…”
“Still, what? I’m not asking for you to relocate Bridget to a different goddamn jurisdiction. I just want her on another floor.”
In addition to the triceps massage and darting eyes, the officer now started to bounce up and down on his toes.
“I wanna help, I really do, but I gotta call my boss. It’ll take, like, two minutes. It’s not really a big—”
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Heinlin demanded.
“Agent... the FBI Agent,” the officer began, clearly unable to remember her name, “she wants to move the prisoner.”
When Dr. Heinlin glanced over at her, Chase gave him a subtle nod. The doctor looked back at the cop and said, “Yes, and what’s the problem?”
“The problem?”
“What’s the problem, officer?”
“Well, n-not a problem, really, but I gotta call my boss.”
“You do what you have to do, officer. But I don’t really care what you, your boss, or the FBI says. The girl in there? She isn’t a prisoner. She’s a patient. And I want her moved.” This straightened the cop up. “If you want to go with her…”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Chase confirmed. “Make sure she doesn’t wander off.”
The cop broke.
“If it’s doctor’s orders, then…”
“It is,” Dr. Heinlin said sternly.
“One more thing,” Chase added. “If the good doctor deems that she is fit to stand trial and if charges are laid—”
“If charges are—”
Chase interrupted him.
“If charges are laid, then I will be hiring her a lawyer. I don’t want her being represented by a public defender who just passed the bar.”
All eyes were on her now, but Chase didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable. The cop, on the other hand, looked absolutely miserable.
“I don’t understand. I thought you said her lawyer was already here. The name… it wasn’t on the list.”
“That wasn’t her lawyer,” Chase interjected. “Like I said, if she’s charged then I’ll hire someone.”
Chase already had a specific person in mind, the sleazy lawyer from New York who had gotten ex-NYPD Detective Damien Drake out of numerous tight spots: Roger Schneiderman.
She didn’t care if this was an egregious conflict of interest, either. Chase would do whatever it took to keep Bridget out of prison.
“Okay, okay,” the cop relented. Both Dr. Heinlin and Chase watched as he went into Bridget’s room and began speaking to the girl.
“Thanks for backing me up,” Chase said out of the corner of her mouth.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I.”
The cop and Bridget emerged from the room, and Chase was happy to see that she remained uncuffed.
“Two floors down, room six-twelve,” Dr. Heinlin said, without skipping a beat.
The cop nodded and they started to walk past them.
Chase nearly let them go, but at the last second, she grabbed the girl’s arm and said, “Sometimes it’s better if you don’t remember.”
Bridget looked at her confused but then nodded.
She watched them make it to the elevator before addressing Dr. Heinlin.
“Do you mind if I use this room for a while?” Chase asked, indicating the room that Bridget had just vacated. “You can add it to my tab. I don’t need a nurse or a doctor. I just need to rest.”
“No problem. Chase, I think I know what you’re planning, and I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but—”
“Then don’t.”
Chase spun and opened the door to Bridget’s room. Inside, she found an unused hospital gown and slipped it over her clothes. Then she crawled into bed and lay on her side, her back to the door.
This was incredibly uncomfortable, and she could feel an awful pressure rising from her breast to the hollow of her throat, but it was also necessary.
It dawned on Chase as she lay there, that this was far from the first time that she’d slept in the same bed as a killer. But then she thought, maybe Bridget was the nicest of them all.
Less than two hours after she had taken over Bridget’s room, and had dozed off a handful of times, Chase heard the door open.
Wide awake now, she continued to pretend to be asleep.
“Bridget?” a soft female voice asked. Chase listened to her footsteps approach the bed. “Bridget, it’s me, your lawyer. I told you I would—”
Chase kicked off the sheet as she turned and aimed the gun she’d been cradling at the woman in the doorway.
“I’m not Bridget,” she said with a snarl. “And you’re not a lawyer, you dumb cunt.”
Chapter 55
“You can’t be serious,” Floyd said even though he knew that for once, Tate was being just that: serious.
To prove his point, Tate showed Floyd first the photo that Chase had taken from Roger’s home, the same one of the three of them that he’d seen on Henry’s fridge. Next, he displayed an image of Dr. Wayne Griffith III in the morgue.
“You see the resemblance?” Tate asked, excitement in his voice. “Doesn’t the girl look like Dr. Griffith?”
Floyd didn’t disagree, but two photographs, one of which was of a corpse, were far from conclusive evidence.
“Maybe?”
“You’re right, you’re right. Coincidence—could be a coincidence.”
After all the times that Tate had brought up his previous partner Conrad Striker, Floyd was finally able to educate Tate on something he’d learned from a partner of his own: Jeremy Stitts.
“I don’t believe in coincidences. We have an ID linking this crime to the one in Columbus, and the MOs are identical? Sounds like a definitive link. Listen, I know the DNA came back negative when comparing the hairbrush from Roger’s house and the girl who’d killed him, but what about the girl who attacked Chase or the one who killed Wayne?”
“Wayne? You think his own daughter…?” Tate shook his head. “You know what, coincidence or not before we jump to conclusions, we should contact Meredith Griffith to see if she actually has a daughter.”
Floyd felt his balls rise into his stomach.
“Should we—sh-should we c-c-call her?”
Tate thought about this and then nodded.
“I’ll call Meredith Griffith, test the waters. If she has a daughter, we don’t know where she is. All we know was that someone with her ID was at the homeless shelter a while back and that that girl knew Roger Evans and Henry Saburra.”
To Floyd, Tate’s monologue sounded like something he would say as a delay tactic.
“You okay, Tate?”
Tate scowled.
“I can’t believe we missed this. We have crimes committed by young women and not one, but two of the involved families have daughters that we don’t know about? Floyd, we fucked up.”
Floyd thought that Tate was being unduly harsh, especially considering the man hadn’t been in the same state when they’d interviewed Henry.
Interviewed Henry…
“Shit,” he cursed and then sighed heavily.
“What?” Tate asked. He had his phone out and was anxious to speak to Meredith Griffith to confirm the information that Margaret had given him.
“You didn’t screw up, I did,” Floyd said under his breath. And so did Chase.
“Floyd—”
“No, listen, when we interviewed Henry, I asked him if he knew Dr. Wayne Griffith III. I don’t know why, but I just blurted his name out. And his face… Henry’s face went, I dunno, squirrelly. I thought it was strange at the time, but—”
He was about to say, but Chase didn’t notice it, so I let it go, but didn’t feel like throwing her under the bus. Floyd finished his sentence with a shrug.
Tate nodded consolingly.
“We all screwed up.”
He dialed Mrs. Griffith’s number and put it on speaker phone. The woman answered after the fourth ring.
“Mrs. Griffith?” Tate began, lowering his voice an octave or two.
“Who is this?” came the harsh reply.
“This is FBI Agent Tate Abernathy. We met a few days ago at—”
“I remember you. You were there when that bitch Julia attacked me at my husband’s funeral.”
Tate looked at Floyd, silently projecting the idea that that’s not the way he remembered things going down.
“I was there. I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
The phone went silent.
Well, at least she didn’t immediately reply with, I don’t have a daughter, you dumb ass FBI Agent.
Seconds ticked by.
“Mrs. Griffith?”
“What about her?” There was still some bite to the woman’s words, but far less chew.
“I don’t recall seeing her at the funeral, so I was just—”
“She wasn’t there. We—my husband and I—haven’t seen her in a long time. I just don’t understand what Becca has to do with any of this. Is it that bitch Julia? Did she say something? Because I’ve seen her lurking around, pretending to be driving by the house.”
Tate raised both eyebrows.
“No, this has nothing to do with Julia. We would like to speak to your daughter. Is that possible?”
“Good luck. No idea where she is. Two years ago, she picked up and left. She was sixteen, couldn’t stop her even if we’d tried.”
“Was that the first time she’d run away?”
“First time? No, she ran away all the time. This time, though, she never came back.”
“And did your husband and daughter—”
Meredith’s sigh was so dramatic and prolonged that it sounded to Floyd like uncontrolled flatulence.
“Look, Agent Tabernacle, Becca was sick. I think she was into drugs, okay? Always dirty, forgetting to wash. Forgetting to eat. I forced her into rehab, but she just ran away from that, too. Wayne thought—shit, why are you asking about her?”
Floyd was quite certain that he hated this woman, and he didn’t use that word lightly. How could someone be so callous as this? The father of her child dies, and she makes zero effort to locate her? To tell her what happened?
Tate was also disturbed by this.
“I just—I didn’t see her at the funeral, that’s all. Wanted to—”
“But you did see Julia, right? And wasn’t she… trespassing? What are you going to do about her?”
“Ms. Griffith, I’m sorry again for the disruption that she might’ve caused. But Julia Abrams didn’t break any laws?”
Meredith scoffed, which, while it wasn’t as impressive as her sigh, had the same flatulent quality about it.
“Didn’t break any laws? You mean whores are legal in Ohio? Fucking people like my husband for money? That’s not breaking the law?”
Tate held his hands up, begging Floyd to help out. But there was no chance that Floyd was going to have anything to do with this piece of work.
“Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Well, if you are going to do anything about her, then I will!”
Now it was Tate’s turn to sigh.
“Ms. Griffith, I—” the phone beeped three times. “She hung up.” Tate stared at Floyd. “What the fuck was that all about? Can you believe that she hung up on me?”
“Oh, I can believe it. What I can’t believe, is how long Wayne put up with her. And can you blame him for seeking something on the side?”
Tate chuckled.
“Hell, no. You should have seen Meredith and Julia at the funeral, by the way. Julia wasn’t doing anything wrong, and Meredith was about to strangle her.”
“Not surprised,” Floyd said, growing serious again. “What do you think about what Meredith said about her daughter? How she stopped washing and eating? Sounds a lot like our murderers.”
“Sure does.”
“You think it could be… one of them?” Floyd asked, circling back to his earlier question. “Could Becca be one of the killers?”
“I have no idea, but there is one person who might.”
“Chase?”
Tate shot him another look.
“No, not Chase. The girl at the hospital who attacked Chase. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll tell us her name is Rebecca Griffith.”
Chapter 56
“Bridget?”
Chase sneered.
“My name isn’t Bridget. It’s Chase. And you’re Melissa, right? Or do you go by Teresa Long?”
“Who? What?” the pale woman looked confused.
“Did you forget that name? Teresa Long? Are you so brainwashed that you forget the name your parents gave you?”
When Melissa took a step back, Chase raised the gun.
“My name is Melissa,” the woman said meekly.
“Sure, it is, and I’m the fucking Easter Bunny. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Bridget.”
Chase stood, protecting the sore half of her body by leaning in that direction.
“Yeah, I know you are. You’re here to tell her to kill herself.”
“N-no,” Melissa said, but she was a shitty actress. One would think that a grown woman who had spent her entire adult life pretending to be someone else would be better at lying.
“Yeah, that’s why you’re here. But I don’t give a shit about that. I want you to tell me that Brian sent you here to kill me. I want you to say the words.”
Chase expected that even speaking this herself would have a haunting, chilling effect, but they seemed natural. Perhaps it was the circumstances, all the death that had surrounded with over the past few days, or maybe it was just that she was comfortable with the idea of being dead.
There is nothing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melissa said, unwilling to meet her eyes.
Chase lashed out and grabbed the woman by the front of her shirt with one hand and pulled her so close that their noses were nearly touching.
“After I met your piece of shit husband in County, he called you, didn’t he? What did he say? Follow her? I do not how he figured this case out before me, but he knew. And he told you to meet up with Henry, get one of his sick girls to try and kill me? Isn’t that right? Typical of a man like Brian. Not willing to do his dirty work, hiring someone three people removed to try to take me out.”
Chase could see in the woman’s terrified eyes that what she said was the truth, that she’d nailed it right on the head. But seeing it in her eyes was one thing, hearing the words out of Melissa Jalston’s mouth was another beast entirely.
“Say it,” Chase hissed.
In her current state, if Melissa decided to try to shake free, or just shove Chase, she’d win that contest of strength, hands down. Chase still had her gun, lowered now, but even as furious as she was, the likelihood of using it for anything other than a threat was highly unlikely.
But Melissa Jalston wasn’t a woman who stood up for herself. Brian had made sure of that. This was a woman who, like Chase’s sister had been kidnapped at a young age and indoctrinated. Her entire life had been spent subservient to Brian or Timothy or both.
No, she wasn’t about to stand up for herself now.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melissa said softly. Each additional lie that came out of her mouth was spoken at a lower octave. A few more, and she wouldn’t even be making sounds, just moving her lips.
“Say it!” Chase said giving the woman a rough shake, the hardest she could manage in her current condition with just one hand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Disgusted, Chase let go and stepped back.
“Of course, you understand. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
And yet, while they both knew that she was speaking the truth, Chase also knew that under no circumstance was this woman going to say anything to incriminate Brian Jalston. She’d proven as much when Chase had rescued her and yet Melissa, like all the other girls save Georgina, not only stuck around but visited him weekly in jail.
Chase cursed under her breath, and she tried to stem her anger.
Like Bridget, Melissa was an implement, a tool, a device that was manipulated and coerced into action.
“Kill.”
The word comes from nowhere and everywhere and it fills every putrid pore and every fetid cavity.
“Kill.”
Chase put the gun in her holster. Melissa didn’t react. She just stood there, like some sort of automaton that had completed its coding circuit and was awaiting further instruction.
